Bombay

Saturday night I went out with the couch surfing couple, their friends, and some other coch surfers from new zealand. We went to a bar called toto in an area called bandra. it was an extremely strange experience walking in off the street to some bar that could have been placed in the east village without anyone noticing. Even the prices were east village like. Still it was a good time and I got to know my hosts a little better. They are two years married and *extremely* ambitious, working every day until 10pm. Definitely part of that burgeoning middle class - they are going to nice malls, buying a car, getting a new apartment, looking for a bigger tv and generally being sophisticated consumers. Although they had an arranged marriage, have no debt and have three servants (they arrive one after the other in the morning, one to clean, one to cook and one to do the laundry.). So there are some signficant differences with the US :) sunday we lazed around watching the cricket and tennis.

Deva arrived in on sunday night, exhausted after taking her exam, hardly sleeping the last week and then not sleeping on the plane. With the jet lag though she was up at 7am and we went to find breakfast and explore the city (apparently there are no breakfast places open that early). We took the train in to colaba which was an experience. At one point I was standing hanging on the doorway and the train stopped at a station, I moved to the side but way too slow and a mass of people pushed me out of the way, swearing in hindi at me. Deva rode in the womens carriage, no men allowed, she said it was a lot more civilized. At one point I thought I saw some women in my carriage, but they turned out to be transvestites, wandering around clapping their hands and touching everyone in the carriage, I think to try and get some money from people.

In colaba we had lunch at cafe leopold, which was great. The place does not seem to have lost business after the shootings and it was packed. I enjoyed sitting there after reading shantaram, where it features as one of the hangouts for the characters. After wandering around some more and having *every* single taxi driver or auto rickshaw driver try and tell us that their meter was broken, we needed a break, so we went to watch a new bollywood movie (in hindi) called Luck By Chance. It was enjoyable eye candy, lots of dancing, but deva passed out from exhaustion half way through, so we left early and got a taxi back home.
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Conor